Richard Whittall:

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Alon Raab in The International Journal of the History of Sport: “Dorsey’s blog is a goldmine of information.”

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"James combines his intimate knowledge of the region with a great passion for soccer"

Christopher Ahl, Play the Game: "An excellent Middle East Football blog"

James Corbett, Inside World Football

Monday, April 30, 2012

A stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace process, a dwindling
number of Palestinians participating in non-governmental reconciliation efforts
and increased racism in Israeli soccer constitute two sides of the same coin:
fading hope and interest in peace, hardening battle lines and a resurgence of
racism on both sides of the divide.

Yet, the measures being discussed to curb mounting violence
on and off the pitch threaten to reduce political and social issues to a
problem of law enforcement as the heads of Israel’s 16 premier league club meet
to debate how to cope with a situation that is spiralling out of control. The
solution to Israel’s soccer violence no doubt involves law enforcement, but a
crackdown and harsher penalties are unlikely to restore faith in future
Israeli-Palestinian coexistence or mitigate the brutalizing effect on Israeli
society of 45 years of occupation of Palestinian land.

Granted, the heads of Israel’s top soccer clubs lack the power
to address the larger political and social issues. Their inability to influence
political and security decisions has become evident over the past year in what
Palestinian soccer officials say is the inability of Israeli sports officials
to even ease the restrictions on travel imposed on Palestinian athletes in the
West Bank and Gaza. A hotline established last year between the Israeli and
Palestinian Olympic committees to tackle such issues has so far produced little
results.

"The problem is the Israeli committee is not the relevant
authority for the movement of people and equipment. We are trying, but I don't
want to embarrass anyone," said Jibril Rajoub, who heads both the
Palestinian Football Association and Olympic Committee, in an interview last
year.

Nonetheless, there are things the Israeli soccer federation
can do to counter an environment of increased polarisation and racially
motivated violence in the absence of political will among both Israeli and
Palestinian political elites to definitively tackle big ticket issues involved
in peace such as settlements, refugees, borders and the future of Jerusalem.

The Israeli Football Association (IFA) and the heads of
soccer clubs need to come to grips with two types of albeit inter-related
violence: racially-motivated aggression against Palestinians and those that
empathise with their cause and violence involving only Jewish players and fans.
Their response to inter-Jewish violence is clear.

"The first thing
to do is significantly increase the punishments. I have been talking about this
for more than 20 years, and that was a time football was much more
violent," the Associated Press quoted Maccabi Haifa Chairman Jacob Shahar
as saying.

Less clear is their response to mounting Israeli-Palestinian
soccer tension. " The field has become a battleground, involving not only
fans but also players, coaches, officials ... it is impossible to stay
silent," Israeli Culture and Sports Minister Limor Livnat told a recent
press conference after being instructed by Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu to
put an end to the violence.

Messrs. Livnat and Shahar were speaking after a series of
incidents in which players and fans clashed on the pitch and notoriously racist
supporters of Beitar Jerusalem, a club historically linked to Israel’s
right-wing attacked Palestinian shoppers and workers in a mall as well as later
a Jewish woman who protest against their racist attitudes. Beitar Jerusalem is
the only Israeli club that has never hired a Palestinian player, who are among
Israel’s highest scorers. In response to
Beitar Jerusalem chants of ‘Death to the Arabs,’ Palestinian supporters of
Israeli Palestinian clubs like Bnei Sakhnin have begun singing ‘Death to the
Jews.’

Bnei Sakhnin supports chant 'Death to the Jews'

Writing in Soccer & Society, Israeli sports scholar Amir
Ben-Porat warned already four years ago that “the football stadium has become
an arena for protest: political, ethnic, nationalism, etc… ‘Death to the Arabs’
has thus become common chant in football stadiums… Many Israelis consider the
Israeli Arabs (Palestinians) to be ‘Conditional Strangers,’ that is temporary
citizens… Contrary to conventional expectations, these fans are not
unsophisticated rowdies, but middle-class political-ideological right-wingers,
whose rejection of Arab football players on their team is based on a definite
conception of Israel as a Jewish (Zionist) state,” Mr. Ben-Porat wrote.

The IFA, despite being the only soccer body in the Middle
East to have launched a campaign against racism, has allowed what Mr. Ben-Porat
describes as ‘permissive territory’ that in which “some deviant behaviours are
tolerated (such as using profanities) as long as definite rules are followed
(that is, no racist chants)” to get out of hand.

The IFA has signalled a lack of sincerity by failing to impose
its anti-racism rule by cracking down as hard on racism as it intends to do on what
amounts to hooliganism. Forcing Beitar Jerusalem to drop its ban on Palestinian
players, a violation of Israeli equal opportunity laws, and severely penalizing
it for its fan behaviour rather than simply giving the club a slap on its
knuckles while also taking Bnei Sakhnin to task for the behaviour of its fans
would go a long way to tackling the issue of mounting racism on the pitch.

It would also send a signal to Israelis and Palestinians at
a time that Palestinians are increasingly less inclined to engage with Israelis
in the belief that reconciliation efforts are senseless as long as the
Israeli-Palestinian peace process is stalemated. An IFA crackdown on racism
would to some degree counter Palestinian claims that there is no partner in
Israel amidst the violence employed by Israeli security forces against
protesters on the West Bank and anti-Palestinian statements by Israel’s
ultra-nationalist Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman.

Israeli peace activists warn that waning Palestinian
interest in people-to-people encounters with Israelis threaten to undermine
what is left of Israel’s already weakened peace movement. While peace may be
beyond the IFA’s purview, a serious crackdown on racism would not only serve to
counter what is an increasingly ugly trend in Israeli society but like the
hotline signal that there are Israeli institutions that are willing to play
their part.

James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam
School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in
Singapore and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East
Soccer.

Monday, April 23, 2012

Fan
violence has sparked match cancellations on both sides of the Arab-Israeli
divide.

The stakes
for Egyptian and Israeli soccer fans are high – the nature of the society they
want to live in and in some cases the very existence of some of their
financially troubled clubs – even if the two groups are likely to agree on
little more than their passion for the game.

For
militant Egyptian soccer fans the battle is about securing the goals of last
year’s popular uprising that toppled Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, ending
military rule and saving clubs from financial ruin as a result of initial
suspension and ultimate cancellation of Egypt’s top two tournaments. A majority
of Egyptian fans, who favor a more pro-Palestinian Egyptian foreign policy,
have little empathy for their Israeli counterparts whom they see as thugs, many
of whom are racists with their anti-Arab and anti-Muslim chants attitudes.

The
Egyptian view is not unfounded even if leaders of the Egyptian ultras –
militant, highly politicized, street battle-hardened fan groups modeled on
similar organizations in Italy and Serbia – are struggling to keep their rank
and file whose cry for dignity is often expressed in clashes with security
forces under control.

Israeli
soccer brawls over the past month ranged from pure hooliganism and violent
clashes between players to attacks on Palestinians and more moderate Jews outside
the confines of the stadium. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Sunday
called for a crackdown on violence on the soccer field, after fighting broke
out on Friday between players of Hapoel Ramat Gan and Bnei Lod. "If
there's violence, there will not be soccer. We must uproot this violence in
order to return to games that spectators can enjoy, myself among them,” Mr.
Netanyahu told a cabinet meeting according to The Jerusalem Post.

The
incident in Ramat Gan followed thousands of Hapoel Tel Aviv fans rioting on the
pitch after their team lost to Maccabi Tel Aviv. A few days later, two fans of
Maccabi Petach Tikvah attempted to attack a referee. In late March a Hapoel
Haifa player was hospitalized after being headbutted by a Maccabi Petach Tikvah
coach and then kicked in the head by a team associate. The two most onerous incidents
involved militant anti-Arab fans of financially troubled Beitar Jerusalem, Mr.
Netanyahu’s notorious club, in which supporters first attacked Palestinian workers
and shoppers in a Jerusalem mall and later a Jewish woman who protested against
their racist attitude. Police were severely criticized for failing to intervene
in the mall attack.

The
situation in nationalist Israel and post-Egypt could not be more different the
laxity of the Israeli police notwithstanding. Yet, they are similar when it
comes to the lack of political will on both sides of the Egyptian-Israeli
divide to tackle soccer violence as well as governments’ failure to create an
environment in which politically motivated violence is viewed as unacceptable.
To be sure, the Israeli Football Association (IFA) has responded firmly to
player violence but despite being the only soccer body in the Middle East and
North Africa to have launched an anti-racist campaign has been lenient in
meting out punishments for politically motivated violence.

The IFA
last month significantly reduced Beitar's punishment for soccer violence from
three home games out of town and one behind partly closed doors to on the
grounds that the measure would not change fan behavior. Withthe worst disciplinary record in Israel’s
Premier League, Beitar has faced since 2005 more than 20 hearings and has
received various punishments, including point deductions, fines and matches
behind closed doors because of its fans’ racism.

Beitar’s
matches often resemble a Middle Eastern battlefield. It’s mostly Sephardic fans
of Middle Eastern and North African origin, revel in their status as the bad
boys of Israeli soccer. Their dislike of Ashkenazi Jews of East European
extraction rivals their disdain for Palestinians. Supported by Israeli right
wing leaders, Beitar traces its roots to a revanchist Zionist youth movement.
Its founding players actively resisted the pre-state British mandate
authorities. Beitar is Israel’s only leading club never to have signed an
Israeli Palestinian player because of fan pressure despite the fact that
Palestinians are among the country’s top players.

By
contrast, Egyptian teams already reeling from the cancellation of the Premier
League in February following the death of 74 fans in a brawl in the Suez Canal
city of Port Said fear financial disaster as a result of Sunday’s looming
annulment of the Egypt Cup. The Egyptian Football Association (EFA) has
appealed to the country’s military rulers, the Supreme Council of the Armed
Forces (SCAF), to step in after a refusal by the interior ministry, which
controls the police and the security forces. The refusal was prompted by the security
forces’ reluctance to engage with deeply hostile, militant soccer fans because
clashes would further damage their already tarnished image as the executioners
of the former Mubarak regime and the military.

The
military and the police have done little in the 14 months since Mubarak’s
departure to polish the image of the security forces by projecting a
willingness to reform the police, holding officers accountable for their
actions and being seen to investigate the Port Said incident that allows the
chips to fall where they fall. The trial against 61, people including fans and
nine security officials, accused of responsibility for Port Said was suspended
at its opening last week after disruptions by family and friends of the dead.

Police
reform is a tough pill to swallow for the Egyptian military. The military “find
themselves in a classic Catch-22 situation with regards to police reform. If
they listen to the aspirations of the people and fully reform the police, they
lose a valuable tool of state control. Should reform take place, where would
the buck stop? Real reform in state institutions might later have personal
ramifications for SCAF itself, as Egyptians are already calling for civilian
control over the military, which may lead to investigations of the military
junta down the line. On the other hand, should SCAF choose not to fully reform
the police, they risk continued clashes with the people, who no longer fear the
police - and consider it one of the last remaining bastions of the old regime,”
said Adel Abdel Ghafar, a PhD scholar at the Australian National University and
scion of a prominent Egyptian soccer figure, writing on Al Jazeera.com.

Granted,
the Israeli police does not have the problems of their Egyptian counterpart.
But if the stakes in Egypt are a more transparent, more accountable society, in
Israel they are the very democracy that the Jewish state prides itself on,
which increasingly is less based on tolerance and respect for diverging
opinions and ethnic and religious minorities and ever more so on intolerance
and the brutalizing effects of 45 years of occupation of Palestinian lands.

Violence in
Israel is not limited to the soccer pitch. A senior Israeli military officer
was celebrated by Israel’s right wing after attacking on camera a bicycle
protester on the West Bank on camera in the same week as the Ramat Gan
incident. Youths on a Tel Aviv beach taunted and abused a mentally disturbed
woman inviting her to have sex with them.

The battles
in Egypt and Israel are fought on multiple battlefields of which soccer is an
important one. That puts the onus not only on governments but also on soccer
associations, club management and last but not least world soccer body FIFA,
which so far for all practical matters has looked the other way by at best
issuing lame protests that Israelis and Egyptians can ignore because there is
no price to pay.

With an
inept military more concerned about its perks than the country’s future in
charge in Egypt and an Israeli government that includes many Beitar Jerusalem
supporters, little can be expected beyond at best demands for law enforcement
from the highest authority in the country.

That means
that the national soccer federations, FIFA and the regional associations, the
Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) and the Confederation of African
Football (CAF), more than ever need to step up to the plate.

James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School
of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and
the author of the blog, The
Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.

Expert: Israel's pressure to have little impact on the "Iran-Six powers" negotiations

Israel clearly wants to maintain pressure on Iran as well as on the U.S., it's a position that makes perfect sense from Israel's point of view, Senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University's S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, James M. Dorsey told Trend, commenting on Israel's position regarding the recent "Iran-Six powers" talks in Istanbul.

Two rounds of talks between Iran and the P5+1 countries have been held in Istanbul this past weekend, and, according to official statements, the discussions were "constructive".

The Iranian side was represented by ran's Supreme National Security Council Secretary,chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili, while Union foreign policy Chief Catherine Ashton handled the matters for the Six European powers (four permanent U.N. Security Council members Britain, France, China and Russia, plus Germany).

"Israel's position will have little impact on the negotiation process," Dorsey added.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday criticized nuclear talks between Iran and six world powers, saying that the Islamic republic has been given five weeks to continue enriching uranium until the next round of talks.

Speaking about the next scheduled meeting of "Iran-Six powers" negotiations that should take place in Baghdad on May 23, Dorsey said it is too early to predict anything.

"Important is the fact that all sides feel that there was a willingness to negotiate and therefore a basis to meet again on May 23," Dorsey said.

"In the run-up to the Baghdad meeting Iran and its interlocutors will be seeking to agree on a specific agenda. Whether they succeed will be a first indication of what the chances are of achieving a negotiated settlement," he added. "As always, the devil is in the details".

The United States and its European allies suspect Iran of covertly developing atomic weapons, accusations Tehran denies. The Islamic state says it has a sovereign right to nuclear activities, which it says are entirely civilian.

Turkey and Tehran: Caught between

a rock and a hard place

Turkey’s besting Iran in the contest for the hearts and minds of advocates of change in Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East and North Africa is proving to be both a blessing and a curse. With tension mounting over Iran’s nuclear ambitions and the perceived window of opportunity for a military strike closing, Turkey faces increased challenges and the threat of a proxy war with Syria and the Islamic republic. This is compounded by the fact that the US, Israel and Saudi Arabia need Turkey in their effort to further corner the regime in Syria and to isolate Iran, but want to prevent a shift in regional power away from the kingdom and the Israeli state to Ankara -- increasingly held up as the model of an economically successful, Islamist-led democracy.

A concerted effort by the US, Israel and Saudi Arabia to further isolate Iran has laid
bare the challenges facing Turkey against the backdrop of an ever more severe
sanctions regime, increased debate regarding a military strike to prevent the Islamic
republic from developing a nuclear weapon and popular revolts sweeping the Middle
East and North Africa.

The challenges are evident in the anti-Iranian campaign’s little noticed subtext,
with the US, Saudi Arabia and Israel seeking to prevent a shift of power in the
region from Israel and the Gulf to Turkey and Iran. All three see benefit in Turkey’s
rising star as a result of its emotional support for Palestine, its deteriorating relations
with its erstwhile ally Israel, its perceived support for the Arab revolt, an impressive
economic performance and the fact that it is ruled by an elected Islamist government.
(The Justice and Development Party (AK Party), despite its Islamist origins and appeal
as well as a continued widespread perception of the party as Islamist, rejects this label,
arguing that it has put its Islamist past behind it.) However, the trio does not want
Turkey’s ascendance to be at the expense of either the kingdom or the Jewish state.

Turkey has so far largely been shielded from criticism that it, like the US, is seeking
to maintain the status quo in the Gulf and has failed to match words with deeds in its
condemnation of the Syrian regime’s brutal crackdown on anti-government protesters,
one which has already cost more than 5,000 lives. The veil shrouding contradictions in
Turkish -- as well as US, Israeli and Saudi -- policy could well soon be lifted, with Syria
emerging as a crucial flashpoint in the mushrooming power struggle in the Middle \
East \ and North Africa (MENA). Increasingly it is looking like a matter of when rather
than if the wave of protests truly spreads to the energy-rich Gulf countries, Saudi
Arabia first and foremost among them.

The gradual morphing of the 11-month old Syrian protests into a civil war, much as
was the case in Libya, leaves Turkey stuck between a rock and a hard place. With
little appetite for military intervention despite its support of the revolt and warnings
that there would be consequences if Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad failed to
engage with his detractors and initiate political and economic reform, Turkey risks
being perceived as a paper tiger. Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu insisted
Turkey was “ready for all possible scenarios” but had as yet not considered military
intervention and didn’t want to. Similarly, he suggested that Turkey could create a
military buffer zone within Syria, should tens of thousands of Syrians seek refuge in
Turkey, all the while insisting that such a zone was “not on the agenda.” This
reluctance to put its money where its mouth is from Turkey is not a stance it is likely
to be able to maintain for much longer, with the failure of Arab League monitors in
Syria, tightening economic sanctions and an Arab League-backed move to get UN
Security Council endorsement of its call for al-Assad to step down.

Turkey could end up in the same boat as the US, which has seen its influence and
credibility in MENA wane because of its inability to match its words with deeds. Despite
its denunciations of al-Assad, Turkey has -- like the US -- remained silent on the need
for change in the Gulf.Like the US it has a vested interest in ensuring that the revolt
does not hit the region, Saudi Arabia in particular, with full force.

Consequently, the struggle of US President Barack Obama is one Turkey may well face.
The US administration is finding it difficult to wield its influence in a region with a more
assertive Arab public opinion, one demanding that Washington make good on its
promises in terms of both the revolution and declared support for an independent
Palestinian state.

Obama’s inability to do so, particularly in an election year, means that the US is finding
it increasingly hard to perform its past balancing of diametrically opposed demands and
expectations from its allies in the Middle East and North Africa. US support for the
toppling of leaders like Egypt’s Gen. Hosni Mubarak has damaged its ties to key autocratic
allies like Saudi Arabia, while the need to be seen to be make real steps in furthering
Palestinian independence threatens to put it on a collision course with Israel.

Turkey’s potential policy dilemma is complicated by continued fallout from the 2010
killing by Israeli Special Forces of nine Turkish nationals aboard the Mavi Marmara,
a Turkish aid ship seeking to run Israel’s blockade of the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.
Israel imposed its naval blockade on Gaza after Hamas seized control of the territory in
June 2007, with Tel Aviv saying it was necessary to prevent weapons being supplied to
militants in the strip. Critics of the sea and land blockade describe it as collective
punishment of Gaza’s 1.5 million inhabitants.

Turkey has painted itself into a corner with its refusal to reverse the downgrading of
diplomatic relations with Israel to the level of second secretary and the suspension of
all military cooperation. Ankara is adamant that these measures will continue as long
as Israel fails to apologize or offer compensation for the death of the Turkish activists,
and maintains its blockade of Gaza. Short term, Turkey’s attitude has garnered it
popular support across the Arab and Muslim world, but longer term it has complicated
Turkey’s efforts to shield itself from being drawn into the region’s multiple conflicts.

Turkey’s stance on Israel means it has little (if any) ability to bring Israel and Iran back
from the brink of a military confrontation at a time that escalating tension between the
two countries threatens to impair Turkey’s efforts to project itself as a regional Islamic,
democratic, economic and military power.

While Turkish defense and military officials have little doubt that Israel would prevail
in a military confrontation with Iran, even if it is unlikely to fully destroy Iran’s
decentralized and heavily fortified nuclear facilities, they worry that likely Iranian
retaliatory attacks against Israel, as well as against US targets in the Gulf and
Afghanistan, would escalate confrontation with Iran. As a result, members of Prime
Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s ruling AK Party have criticized him for responding
emotionally to Israeli policies. While they remain critical of Tel Aviv, they have urged
Erdoğan to repair relations with Israel in a bid to ensure that Turkey can truly act as a
bridge across the West-East divide as well as MENA’s fault lines. The key to Turkey’s
role may indeed lie partially in Israel, but Turkey has only a limited window of opportunity
to keep the door open as Western nations and Israel increasingly rattle their sabers.

In the event of a pre-emptive attack on Iranian nuclear facilities, any effort by
Ankara to remain on the sidelines risks Turkey’s being portrayed in Tel Aviv and
Washington as having not only turned on Israel -- often a yardstick in the West
for assessing Turkish foreign policy -- but also sided with the enemy. Already
Tehran eyes Ankara’s condemnation of al-Assad, as well as its mounting popularity
in a swath of land stretching from the Atlantic coast of Africa to the Gulf, with suspicion.
Tehran views these developments as a US-Saudi conspiracy designed to prevent the
Islamic Revolution of over 30 years ago getting the credit it deserves as an inspiration
for the Arab revolt and to stymie the appeal of the Islamic republic for states in the
turbulent region.

In a series of messages, Iranian leaders warned Turkey that Turkish support for an
international campaign against Syria, the Islamic republic’s foremost Arab ally, and
Syrian opposition groups would constitute a red line -- warnings Turkey has so far
ignored. Without Syria, Iran would be left only with Iraq as its foremost interlocutor in
the Arab world. Iraq lacks Syria’s relationship with groups like Hezbollah in Lebanon
and Hamas in Palestine and is unlikely to be as compliant and strategic a friend as
Syria is. Turkey compounded Iran’s narrowing options by not only setting its warnings
aside but going a step further with its agreement to install on Turkish soil a NATO
radar system believed to constitute a shield against Iranian ballistic missiles. In recent
weeks, it has also started looking at reducing its dependence on imports of Iranian oil
as Western powers crack down on Iran’s oil sales and the Islamic republic threatens to
retaliate by closing the Strait of Hormuz. Turkey sought to soften the blow by
suggesting that majority state-owned Halkbank would continue to handle Iranian oil
payments as long as that does not run afoul of the sanctions regime.

Turkish officials and analysts fear that mounting tension with Iran could produce a
covert proxy war, with Iran and Syria supporting the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK),
which has stepped up attacks on Turkish military targets in the southeast of the country.
Syria and Iran have already halted their security cooperation with Turkey with regard to
the Kurds. Conservative Iranian columnists have denounced Erdoğan’s government in
recent months as a Sunni Muslim dictatorship that does not represent half the country’s
population -- a reference to Turkey’ large Kurdish and Alevi communities. They warned
that Turkey’s minorities constituted its Achilles’ heel and a potentially destabilizing factor.

In a strange twist, Iranian soccer, pockmarked by nationalist and environmental protests
in Iran’s East Azerbaijan Province, offers a perspective of how Turkey could respond in
a proxy war with Syria and Iran -- one using ethnic minorities as pawns. The soccer
protests in the Bagh Shomal and Yadegar-e-Emam stadiums in Tabriz, the capital of the
province, signal a rise in Azeri nationalism. This trend would enable Turkey to exploit
secessionist sentiments among its Turkic brethren in the predominantly Azeri East
Azerbaijan Province, which borders the Turkic former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan, a
close Turkish ally.

In the latest soccer incident in Tabriz, fans of Tabriz soccer club Tractor Sazi Tabriz F.C.
-- a focus of Iranian Azerbaijan’s identity politics owned by the state-run Iran Tractor
Manufacturing Co. (ITMCO) -- wore shirts bearing Turkey and Azerbaijan’s flags and
raised the latter emblem during a match against Fajr-e Sepasi F.C. of Shiraz. “[The]
Iranian regime will […] charge them with separatism and even arrest them. The main
[Iranian concern] is that the idea of Turkism is strengthening in South Azerbaijan,”
Azeri news website news.az quoted Saftar Rahimli, a member of the board of the World
Azerbaijanis Congress, as saying. Rahimli was referring to the East Azerbaijan Province
by its nationalist Azeri name.

A conservative, pro-Iranian website, Raja News, confirmed the incident in November,
charging that the soccer fans had employed “separatist symbols” and shouted separatist
slogans during the match. Raja News accused the fans of promoting “pan-Turkish” and
“deviant” objectives. It urged authorities to ban nationalist fans from entering soccer
stadiums.

The protests during the match against the Shiraz-based club followed similar protests in
September and October sparked by the Iranian parliament’s refusal to fund efforts to save
the threatened Lake Orumiyeh and by anti-government protests in Tehran’s Azadi Stadium.
The latter occurred both during last month’s 2014 World Cup qualifier against Bahrain and
at a ceremony in May following the death of Nasser Hejazi, an internationally acclaimed
Iranian defender and outspoken critic of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

A decision by security forces in early October to bar fans’ entry into the stadium during a
match against Tehran’s Esteghlal sent thousands into the streets of Tabriz shouting
“Azerbaijan is united!” and “Long live united Azerbaijan with its capital in Tabriz!” Scores
were injured as security forces tried to break up the protest. Cars honking their horns
choked traffic.

“Wherever Tractor goes, fans of the opposing club chant insulting slogans. They imitate the
sound of donkeys, because Azerbaijanis are historically derided as stupid and stubborn.
I remember incidents going back to the time that I was a teenager,” said a long-standing
observer of Iranian soccer.

Mounting Iran-focused tension serves, at least in the case of Israel and Saudi Arabia,
multiple purposes that go beyond the nuclear threat. It puts Turkey on the spot and shifts
attention away from the wave of revolts sweeping MENA.

Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Militant supporters of storied but controversial Beitar
Jerusalem Football Club known for their anti-Palestinian, anti-Ashkenazi Jewish
attitudes harassed and beat a middle-aged Jewish woman who objected to their
anti-Arab slogans in the second such attack in less than a month, according to
Haaretz newspaper.

Contrary to last month’s assault by the Beitar fans on Palestinian
shoppers and workers in a Jerusalem mall, police launched an immediate
investigation. The Israeli police force was heavily criticized for failing to
initially intervene or investigation the mall incident.

The attacks as well as the police’s laxity have outraged
many Israelis and raised questions about the moral fiber of a society that
tolerates such incidents as well as a soccer club that is unashamedly racist.

Jerusalem musician Reli Margalit was attacked after she objected
to dozens of Beitar fans chanting
anti-Arab slogans as they marched on Sunday to Jerusalem’s Teddy Kollek Stadium
for a match against Hapoel Acre that Beitar won 1:0.

"I heard cries of 'Death to the Arabs,' and since I was
still incensed by the Malha Mall attack, I decided that I had to confront them
now. I made a sign reading 'Down with Beitar's racism.' I believed that since
I'm not a young woman and since I was alone, at worst it would come to curses,
no more," Ms. Margalit told Haaretz.

Her assumption proved to be wrong. "Within seconds they
surrounded me and started spitting at me. They took away my sign, and one of
them - actually an older fan - hit me on the head with the pole of his flag.
None of the fans protected me, and one girl showed up and tried to argue with
me,” she said.

Police said they had escorted the militants for part of
their march but had not heard racist slurs in the fans’ chants.

In a repeat of Beitar’s standard response to the racism of
its most militant fans, spokesman Assaf Shaked said the team "cannot be
responsible to all its supporters' actions."

Mounting Beitar fan aggression and violence is believed to
stem from the growing influence among the club’s fans of a group known as La
Familia that is dominated by supporters of Kach, the outlawed violent and
racist party that was headed by assassinated Rabbi Meir Kahane. Beitar’s
management has so far failed to stymie the group’s influence.

The incidents occurred in what City University of New York
scholar Dov Waxman described in a recent article in The Middle East Journal as
an atmosphere of escalating tension between Jews and Palestinians in Israel.
“Attitudes on both sides have hardened, mutual distrust has intensified, fear
has increased, and political opinion has become more militant and
uncompromising….Jews and Palestinians are currently on a collision course, with
potentially severe consequences for their continued peaceful co-existence, as
well as for stability and democracy in Israel,” Mr. Waxman wrote.

The incidents further highlight the failure of the Israeli
Football Association (IFA), the only soccer body in the Middle East and North
Africa to have launched a campaign against racism and discrimination, to rein
in the Beitar fans and curb the club’s submission to its supporters’ racist
attitudes. With the worst disciplinary
record in Israel’s Premier League, Beitar has faced since 2005 more than 20
hearings and has received various punishments, including point deductions,
fines and matches behind closed doors because of its fans’ racist behaviour.

Beitar’s matches often resemble a Middle Eastern
battlefield. It’s mostly Sephardic fans of Middle Eastern and North African
origin, revel in their status as the bad boys of Israeli soccer. Their dislike
of Ashkenazi Jews of East European extraction rivals their disdain for
Palestinians.

Supported by Israeli right wing leaders such as Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Beitar traces its roots to a revanchist Zionist
youth movement. Its founding players actively resisted the pre-state British
mandate authorities.

Beitar is Israel’s only leading club never to have signed an
Israeli Palestinian player because of fan pressure despite the fact that
Palestinians are among the country’s top players. Maccabi Haifa striker
Mohammed Ghadir recently put Beitar on the spot when he challenged the club to
hire him despite its discriminatory hiring policies. The club refused on the
grounds that its fans were not willing to accept a Palestinian player.

Beitar fans shocked Israelis several years ago when they
refused to observe a moment of silence for assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak
Rabin, who initiated the first peace negotiations with the Palestinians.

James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam
School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in
Singapore and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East
Soccer.

1. My view is that the scope of terrorism with the caveat of the threat of militants gaining access to crude weapons of mass destruction has receded to pre 9/11 levels. Al Qaeda as such post-Bin Laden is no longer the major threat. The head of the FBI has conceded as much. Of course, militants who often operate in effect independently using the Al Qaeda label in places like Yemen, North and West Africa pose a threat to national interest more than to homeland security.

Could they still run operations in the U.S. or are they financially in trouble?

2. They probably could but its at the level of law enforcement. They are weakened financially and operationally but perhaps more importantly history has surpassed one. Few people have an appetite

They are rumors that AlQaeda could partner with Los Zetas, so they can get inside the United States and possibly plan an attack. How likely is this to happen?

3. Anything is possible. There have been links between Al Qaeda’s North African affiliate and Central and Latin American drug organizations. That does not mean that they share their interests in common. Los Zetas may not want to further escalate its conflict with the US by taking its war to US soil, particularly at a time that Latin American governments are pushing for an end to the war on drugs and legalization.

Who is AlQaeda’s new boss?

4. Ayman Zawahiri, who is not a loved leader and who has difficulty adopting to new realities.

Any other new terrorist organizations around there?

5. Political violence has always been a fact of life. The major change is that the days of global rather than local ambition are over.

What future holds for AlQaeda?

6. It depends on one’s definition of Al Qaeda: as a global organization of jihad it does not have a future; as a brand name others will exploit, definitely; as a local presence using the brand, there also is a future.

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About Me

James M DorseyWelcome to The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer by James M. Dorsey, a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies. Soccer in the Middle East and North Africa is played as much on as off the pitch. Stadiums are a symbol of the battle for political freedom; economic opportunity; ethnic, religious and national identity; and gender rights. Alongside the mosque, the stadium was until the Arab revolt erupted in late 2010 the only alternative public space for venting pent-up anger and frustration. It was the training ground in countries like Egypt and Tunisia where militant fans prepared for a day in which their organization and street battle experience would serve them in the showdown with autocratic rulers. Soccer has its own unique thrill – a high-stakes game of cat and mouse between militants and security forces and a struggle for a trophy grander than the FIFA World Cup: the future of a region. This blog explores the role of soccer at a time of transition from autocratic rule to a more open society. It also features James’s daily political comment on the region’s developments. Contact: incoherentblog@gmail.comView my complete profile